Tag Archives: education

I have ranted on about education in the past. It’s been something I’m frustrated with when I’m job searching. A lot of employers I meet have the preference of wanting post-secondary students for menial labour. As I read their position’s duties, they do not require someone with such qualifications. As someone with nothing more than a high school diploma, I would think I would be more qualified than a post-secondary student.

As someone with little to no interest in post-secondary, I would consider myself more of an asset to employers since I would have little to no obligation to work. I can world over time and late nights unlike university students who may work over time but are less hesitant to do so because of classes the following day.

I feel young adults are not lazy or not work, but overworked and underpaid. With all the unpaid internships floating around, it’s the employer’s treasure to find free labour through promises of “work experience”. I’ve actually tried to get into some of these interships and most of the time the employers are asking their interns to flip the cost for certain things. I remember this interview where the employer told me about how I would get into events as a media outlet. Suffice to say, if I wanted to write a piece about a concert I will have to flip the bill myself. All for “work experience”, my advice is to ask lots of questions if they’re wanting to just provide you just “work experience”.

Some of you out there might refute this and tell me your job is fitting for your qualifications. Then you have figured out how to get into it. However living in a large city, you have a lot of folks entering post-secondary and come out with an expensive piece of paper with little to no way to justify the last 4-8 years. People go back in and get more degrees and diplomas while some settle for a trade. Perhaps the schooling is not wrong with education, but how education is applied in certain areas. There are sectors which may require a post-secondary qualification, however in positions like cashier and warehouse associate a diploma would make little sense. I’ve even seen sales associates and representatives requiring a bachelor’s degree! The way I see it, there are employers out there expecting way too much from the the employee. Most of the time, employers are the one’s lazy. They don’t seem to want to train you on workplace equipment so they want a school to do it for them.

If you have it nice and set, I dare you to try and find a menial job with your big boy degree. You will not feel those 4 years would be worth anything. I don’t even have one and I would feel the exact same thing.

Recently my local government have decided to change up how sex education is deliver to students in public schools. Like anything coming from the government, there is always opposition against change or goes against their beliefs or opinions. In a recent news article, I read about the public school curriculum to include sex education to be more relevant to this generation. Which includes content about same sex relationships, masturbation, social media awareness like sexting and online bullying and gender awareness; the curriculum comes at a time where it’s more than a decade outdated. The opposition against these changes are those more focused on how the government came to a conclusion than considering how the content will be more inclusive to educate the next generation. Though both ends are in the right, I would consider how sex education should be introduced to children rather than what should be taught and who should be teaching it.

As a former prisoner of the public school system, I can definitely be sure, there are a lot of faults in the system. In particularly the routine of teacher within the confines of what the school board sets out. The system is effective at teaching however it doesn’t engage the students to learn. The only motivation when you reach high school is then to get into university. After a certain point it feels more like an institution that imprisons more than it educates. You go in day after day to learn and do things you don’t necessarily want but you need in order to satisfy the social norm of “successful”. Fact of the matter is success is within the diversity of knowledge we can pool from and not the knowledge base we are given.

Sex education like any other subject should be approached with a mindset of a diverse conversation. Not of a voice to tell you if you are right or wrong but should be inclusive to not discriminate. Our world has changed so quickly in the last 20 years, we went from homophobic and in the closet about gender and sexual diversity to embracing gender and sexual equality. Perhaps it is time to be on the vanguard to education in general if not just sex education. We are not born with user manuals so perhaps we should know how our own bodies work.

As we live in our lives, we will encounter different people and personalities. I think it’s more than appropriate to teach children to be open and objective about the world. A lot of bad things have happened when people act upon another group because they disapproved on their lifestyle choices. Are we going to be no different than those who came before us or can we create the change we want to be? Could we perhaps be the society open to new ideas? If we are, are we willing to accept ideas and concepts foreign to our social norm? As I can tell from these protests, some are ready while some are not ready for what they could possibly gain. Perhaps the protesters themselves should be open minded and see what ideas would be shared in this updated program.

Until next time, I would like to give my final thoughts. The public school system isn’t the only education system you can put your children into, yet not the only prison either. There are private schools you can enroll them in and if all else fails, you can just home school them. If you want to be ignorant, don’t enforce it to the entirety of the system. Take control of the situation yourself than relying on the system to be your children’s parents.